Annoyme.com

                     An Advertising Monologue in Upspeak

So I just went on annoyme.com
And like I found my ring you know like on
Annoyme.com where you will find
Those unique designs that you just can’t find

And those really famous great big name brands  
AND YOU KNOW WHICH ONES I’M TALKING ABOUT
Annoyme.com has the selections and styles
You want to see at annoyme.com

I’m going back on annoyme.com
Today, right now, while I should be at work



(Repeat many times each day for weeks and weeks until the listener changes radio stations.)

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                              An Old Crucifix on the Garden Gate

Summer is better in theory than in practice
A vision through the window of a shady lawn
All green beneath perfect Robin Hood oaks
Bright leaves, a chair, a book, a glass of tea

But the thermometer stands at 97
Even the shade itself wants to burn one’s skin
Wasps seem to seek their end in suicide dives
Wanting to die beneath the swing of a hat

Summer is better as abstract theories
And in our happy childhood memories

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com  
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

                              An Old Man Clinging to a Microphone

                          Those he commands move only in command,
                          Nothing in love…

                                             -Macbeth V.ii.19-20

An old man bowed his head, maybe in prayer
Asking forgiveness for the massacre of innocents
Or maybe he was sorry only for himself
Because no one liked him anymore

His speech was as fragmented as the dead
He gobbled out words, poor scripted cliches’
Those in attendance felt little for him -
Pity, yes, and surely something of fear

For no one dared ask him, as he shuffled away,
“Mr. President, will you please resign today?”

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

         An Old Man in the Hardware Store Considers Autumn

                   “And He has poured down for you the rain”

                                                       -Joel 2:23

“When I’m through here,” he laughed, “I’m going home
I’m going to sit and listen to the rain
My hayfield’s all burnt up, my yard is dead
So I’m gonna to let the rain sing me to sleep”

We said our good-byes to the driest summer ever
And a thank you, Jesus for sweet rain at last
Next to the paper sacks of deer-bait corn
And a display of made-in-China tools

The wind blew open the heavy double doors
And the rain blew with it, and we were glad

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

             An Old Man on a Balcony, Gasping for Breath

              Those he commands move only in command,
               Nothing in love

                                      -Macbeth V.ii.19-20

The city and the nation seem to ignore him
He stands irresolutely, heaving his shoulders
Twitching his lips, fidgeting with his coat
Behind his embalmers’ makeup seeking breath

There are no happy cheering crowds tonight
He waves only to a departing helicopter
And salutes the ghosts of what might have been
Before turning away, inside, to the silence

The people talk about him, but not to him
If they did, he would not listen - he is alone

Okay, I’m scared. Seventy-one years old
And scared. What if the teachers don’t like me?
What if those old principals don’t like me?
And what if the children don’t like me, huh?

I’m apprehensive about my first day
The librarian likes me, though. She’s nice
She asked me to be there. I’ll shine my shoes
And wear a clean shirt and tie – still, I’m scared

Oh, yes, there’s tension in the atmosphere
For this library reading volunteer!

An Old Man Running While Carrying a Volume of The World Book Encyclopedia

A Scene from a Hospital Waiting Room

Cups of coffee are reverently borne
Along the bright hospital corridors
By nurses, doctors, technicians, and all
Scrub-suited healers on their dutiful rounds

But wait! A lean, energetic old man
His wild white hair brimming his gimme cap
Dodges among the sacred cups, and runs
Up the stairs to the ICU waiting room

Clutching an old encyclopedia
Like a dispatch from the front –
                                                               I wish I’d asked

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                             “A Non-Credible Bomb Threat”

How can a bomb threat not be credible?
Either there is a bomb threat
Or there is not a bomb threat
If the immediate determination
(And on what basis is this determination made?)
(And by whom?)
Is that a bomb threat is not credible
Then why is there an investigation?
A non-credible bomb threat by definition is an incredible bomb threat
That’s incredible
And since there is a bomb threat at a school
Then why are the children kept inside the school
(Shelter-in-place with a reported bomb or not-credible bomb?)
And thus blocked from escaping?

A bomb speaks more clearly than the school administration

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com  
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

                                     ­     A Non-Religious Jew

                  “Well, he may be a good man but he’s certainly not
                    Christian. Zelensky is the first Jewish president of
                    Ukraine, even if he is non-religious...”

                                    -The Remnant, 2 March 2022

He stands in rubbled streets during bomb attacks
And takes a selfie to show us he’s alive
Our tee-shirted leader of the free world
He stands among the wreckage and reassures us

He stands in rubbled streets; he needs a shave
He needs some sleep; he does not need a ride
But The Remnant - O infallible Remnant! –
Dismisses him as just a Jew

If only we were all that Jewish
If only we were all that non-religious

An Open Letter to…

A response to the recent fashion, victim-y and self-obsessed, of open letters

Dear Mean People,

You don’t know me but I know you hate me
Because you are not me so I hate you
Even though I don’t know you, but you hate me
For not being as kind and loving as me

So I forgive you, you Facs…Fascs…Fascists
For not thinking and feeling just like me
You just don’t understand my special needs
How my soul is a flower that always bleeds

Because your jack-boots stomped all over my heart
And I’ve got a degree; I’m really smart

An Open Letter to Really Important People
                     The Old Dime Box, Texas Statement
           A Manifesto Made Manifest in Manifesting Manifestingness

We post this serious looking document
Bloated with long vocabulary words
Sodden with weak dependent clauses
Marshaled in numbered ranks, down, down they go

To the GossipNet all serious like
And everyone has to pay attention to us
Because it’s AN OPEN LETTER, y’know -
You may sign it if you’ve got letters behind your name

Signatories:

Apostle-Disciple Magic Dawn, DD., Non-Binary, Author of Green Polar Bears I Am, Co-Equal-Director of the Anti-Oppressionist Theatre Against the Occupation, Agent of the Revolution, Auteur, Guest on The Wheel of Fortune and Parent of Two AMAZING children of indeterminate Gender with Their AWESOME and AMAZING Life-Partner Sven-Marie.

Massive Ferguson, M.Ed., Poet, Rector of Admissions, The University of Where the Old Circuit City Use to Be

Poncy Tworbst, M.A., PUBLISHED Author, Seeker, Inspirational Singer-Songwriter, PUBLISHED

Heather-Mistee La’ Thwitte-Tworbst, Ph.D., Director of Library Resources at Saint Margaret ****** Homeschool Resource Authority Collective, Inc., Certified Ordained Consecrated Priest in The Worldwide Church of Me-ness and Pastor of the World-Famous Weddings ‘R’ Us Chapel of Rainbow Dreams in Magdalena, New Mexico

Lawrence Hall, HSG, Thinker of Thinky-Ness and, Like, Stuff, Endowed Chair he found at Goodwill, His Mark: X

(Sean Ian Johann Johnson, MBA, J.D., Chief Photocopier Operator at Donald Trump University and Fashion Editor at Gun, God, and Guts Magazine, was not able to sign today; he is sharing a cell with other White House staff and patiently awaiting The Day of Greatness.)

So, like, like, so, like, so, you know, like, so,
Like, so, like, you know, it was like, you know,
Like, so, like, you know, like, so, like, like, so,
Like, so, you know, like, so, like, so, like, like,

You know, it was like, you know, like, so, like,
So, you know, like, so, like, like, so, like, so,
You know, like, so, like, so, like, like, you know,
It was like, you know, like, so, like, you know,

Like, so, like, like, so, like, so, you know,
So, like, so, like, like, you know, actually…

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

                        An Orderly Transition of Power, They Say

             Is’t night’s predominance, or the day’s shame
             That darkness does the face of earth entomb
             When living light should kiss it?

                              -Macbeth II.iiii.9-11

On Inauguration Day there should be:

Children waving sparklers, avenues of light
High school bands and Boy Scouts in formation
Merriment along streets scrubbed clean and bright
A happy people in love with their nation

But we are given:

Soldiers, concertina wire strung between Corinthian columns, secret service, chain-link fencing, police, checkpoints, soldiers, roadblocks, secret service, rooftop marksmen, police, missile batteries, soldiers, no-go zones, secret service, lockdowns, police, lockouts, soldiers, security gates, secret service, identification checks, police, radar, soldiers, radios, secret service, body scans, police, x-rays, soldiers, sniffer dogs, secret service, permits, police, passes, soldiers, patdowns, secret service, badges, police, questions, soldiers

Fear

Why?

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com  
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

      A Note about Greeting Even the Most Beneficent Reptiles

I speak to them softly
But the tree frogs look at me
Disapprovingly

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com  
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

      A Note about Greeting Even the Most Beneficent Reptiles

I speak to them softly
But the tree frogs look at me
Disapprovingly

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                                 Another Antihistamine Dream

A failing body staked out upon a bed
Hospital bed
Drips drip and sour drains drain in darkness and silence
The room is all darkness and silence, silence
Is it I?

No one comes

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

                                  Ano­ther Day of Rioting

There they go again, screaming at each other
In a land of plenty, but all wanting more
Through posturing, threatening, bullying
And blaming each other for the wreckage

There they go again, screaming at each other
Bluejays and cardinals are the noisiest of all
And squirrels muscling in on the action
Crows criticizng from branches up high

There they go again, screaming each other
Around their seed-feeder beneath their oak

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                         Another Funeral in Margaritaville


                                      Introibo ad altare Dei.

                    Ad Deum qui laetificat juventutem meum.

                                         -Missale Romanum


Of course all our friends are dying away
Old age sneaks up on us, ghosting us in turn:
Yevgeny, Jimmy, Dusty, Judith, Rod, and we
Who blessed each other in our happy youth

But I tell you we have a duty to sing our songs
Our perhaps artless lines lost long ago
Except that they’re not: we gave them to God
And He joined them to Creation for all of us

Of course all our friends are dying away
Except that they’re not
                                        See you in Margaritaville

She took an oath to defend the Constitution
But no one seemed to have taken an oath
                                                                ­             to defend her


(Now back to the Gridiron Dinner)

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com  
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

                        Another Student.  Another Funeral

Another former student. Another funeral.
A folder with a photograph and a prayer
No one gave the cause of death - I only know
We’re not supposed to be burying our children

A Novitiate in the World

     “…you will go forth from these walls,
     but will live like a monk in the world.”

     -Father Zossima to Alyosha in The Brothers Karamazov
      
Every vocation is a novitiate
And every labor a monastic prayer:
Matins and Lauds are sung over coffee,
Then Terce for the plough, the lathe, and the wheel

Sext is gratitude for the midday meal
And None is the hour for downing tools
Soft Vespers is the song of happy homes
‘Til Compline sends all good folk to their beds -

Final vows are taken at death; for now,
Every vocation is a novitiate

“…you will go forth from these walls,
but will live like a monk in the world.”

-Father Zossima to Alyosha in The Brothers Karamazov
      
Every vocation is a novitiate
And every labor a monastic prayer:
Matins and Lauds are sung over coffee,
Then Terce for the plough, the lathe, and the wheel

Sext is gratitude for the midday meal
And None is the hour for downing tools
Soft Vespers is the song of happy homes
‘Til Compline sends all good folk to their  beds -

Final vows are taken at death; for now,
Every vocation is a novitiate

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com  
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

                       Anticipating a Root Canal Tomorrow

Sometimes you don’t need anesthetics to be goofy -
Anticipating a trip to the dentist will do
To confuse today’s plans into nothingness
And scatter all focus from a favorite book

People have such dentistry every day
You tell yourself, only your self is not listening
Should I go to bed early, or get up late
What will it be like in The Chair tomorrow?

A sigh, a whisper, a desperate wheeze –
Just a little more nitrous oxide, please!

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                                    Anticipating Eye Surgery

I hope when this is done, when this is through
I’ll see the moon as one, and not as two!

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com  
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

                                   Anticipating the Fourth of July

Our Republic has become a chaos of crime:
Riots and arson, shootings in the streets
Infotainhate programmed in angry loops
Mass murders of children by men in white coats

Honoring our freedoms by silencing each other
Pulling down statues and purging our thoughts
Through strident influencers behind their screens
Censoring books and art and even love

With drugs and guns and all such progressive things
(But at least we’re free of those bad ol’ kings)

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

                                     ­   Antihistamine Dreams

My night-time sneezing, cold, and ‘flu medicine -
It flew me back to Viet-Nam last night
Not on a battlefield or Ye Olde Veterans’ tour
But with a mixed group younger than any war

From a tour bus I pointed out scenes of my youth
To people who wisely were not interested
Who with their Leicas took pictures of fields
And the languid flow of the Vam Co Tay

And there were no hard feelings anywhere
Until someone shot me from a window

This site does not permit the caesura divisions at all and I will not post the poem without them. You can find "Antihistamine Dreams with a Little Touch of Grendel in the Night" at my own not-very-well constructed site,

https://reactionarydrivel.blogspot.com/2019/01/antihistamine-dreams-with-little-touch.html

where the divisions are merely botched, not forbidden.

(I think it's rather nice, shivery little poem, especially if read around a campfire at night)




“A little touch of Grendel in the night” is a takeoff of “a little touch of Harry in the night” in Henry V.

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com  
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

                          Anti-Tarnish Silverware Container

                         “Anti-Tarnish Silverware Container”

                                  -a sticker inside the box

A cheap wooden box nailed together long ago
All scratched and patched with mismatched nails and screws
And lined inside with stained, decaying felt
With slots for long lost knives and forks and spoons

Part of someone’s treasure in the Depression time
A dollar or two a month on a layaway plan
At Montgomery Ward or Penney’s or Sears
The “good” silver for Thanksgiving and Christmas

The silverplate has been garage-saled and lost
But there was love, and somehow love remains

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

                  An Unskilled Rotor-Tiller Tiller of the Soil

Plough Monday was by-passed some weeks ago
The Virus of Many Names kept me abed
And then the snow and ice kept me inside
And then – indolence, indolence, okay?

But today, oh, today!

The morning was fresh and cool and damp and still
I wheeled the tiller into the garden patch
Fresh gasoline, then primed the little bulb
And turned the red plastic lever just so

And pulled the cord
And pulled the cord
And pulled the cord
And said bad words
And pulled the cord
And pulled the cord
And pulled the cord
And snarled bad words
And pulled the cord –

Pow!

For smoke and fire
And noise – hooray!
Then forward the tines

The tines at first bounced off the new green grass
I pulled the smoke and noise machine back, back
And held the smoke and noise machine in place
And wrestled it, pinning it to the earth until

It bit into the grass, the bright spring grass
And hurled it back, and then some earth, and more
And still more earth, sweet earth, the nourishing earth
Flung up and out and back again, and down

And there the earth must rest for a few weeks
Then to be turned again, sweet and warm
To receive the ready seeds of happy new life
And join in the miracle of Creation

And in the summer when the soft breezes blow
Zinnias and sunflowers and wild marigolds
Will lift their heads and sing hymns to the sun
And bees and hummingbirds hum the “Amen”

And in those days I will speak kind words
To them all, and study rotor-tillers no more

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

         A One-Line Dismissal of Tucker Carlson Isn’t a Poem, But…


                                   Democracy dies in dorkness

Oh, yes, you should dabble amateurishly
With sketchbook, pen, guitar, and crescent wrench
With telescope and hiking boots and love
With verse that scans and prose that strongly speaks

For a dabbler, all the world is his adventure:
A coffee cup is as Old Santa Fe
A stroll in the garden a pilgrimage
To Canterbury or Santiago

And you should draw and write and sing these things
Oh, yes, you should dabble amateurishly

A fine wine’s not for us; we want cheap red
In paper cups beneath the apple trees
with cheese and bread upon the grasses spread
And you singing along each merry breeze

This fine day’s made for us; we want to kiss
Creation as we kiss each other’s lips
In celebration of sweet summer bliss
While soft away the dreamy twilight slips

Our fine moon’s rising, silvering the air -
She tells us we have kisses yet to share

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com  
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

                              A Pasty Boy in Knee-Pantsies
               Lectures on the Supremacy of Gun Ownership
                             Over Access to Baby Formula

You say our baby’s starving?
Don’t bother me with that
As long as I got me my gun
To rat-a-tat-tat!

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com  
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

                                     ­     Mysteries for the Day

Mysteries for the day
A pebble and a pine cone
They are enough

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

     A Penny Candle – and if You Don’t Have a Penny, Love will Do


          The key to the lighting of a church candle is that, in its tiny
          light, all the mystery of life is drawn up into an eternity
          excluding only sorrow and loss.

                                               -Tod Mixson


It’s not just that a candle struggles against darkness
But that we do too, trying to sort the chaos
With weary eyes and unsure, trembling hands -
But it is something that we’ve lit the candle

It’s not just that a candle flickers in the darkness
But that we shape against shadows all our hopes
Bundling them into a pilgrim’s haversack
For whatever remains of our journey to Light

For in the end we give the candle away
Offering it to a passing Whisper in the night

Simple enough, big print but no big words
Simple enough for me, few words in me
I love the silences, they speak to me
In the ridges and fens among my crops

Simple enough, a pipe down at the pub
Simple enough for me - Guinness or Pimms
I love a pint in the evenings with the lads
In the corner, well armed with pints and darts

Simple enough, big print but no big words
For a penny catechism kind of man

The smoking gun is interesting enough
As is the ****** knife dripping with guts
And his ****-headed beheading of his child
But otherwise – who would be interested in him?

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

               A Pharmacy Aisle Marked INDEPENDENT LIVING

                                 “We shall never surrender”

                                          -Churchill, 1940

Bed and bath grip bars, universal crutches
Quadrupedal crutch tips, raised toilet seats
Cleaning wipes, reaching tools, bedside commodes
Walking sticks (but not one with an Elvis theme)

Sitz baths and universal urinals
Transport chairs, folding walkers, rolling walkers
Commode liner bags, inflatable cushions
Walker ski glides, walker tennis *****

None of this is depressing; it is inspiring:
“We shall never surrender”

A Pilgrim Out of Time

A frail old man bent with the weight of his pack -
He seemed to be carrying a long-dead world
From around 1967 or so
Or maybe he was still looking for truth

Slowly, slowly along the diagonal
Beneath the traffic lights where eight lanes cross
But his strange trail led through another world
And of our reverence for him we paused for him

His journey was his own, his own, alone
That frail old man bent with the weight of his past

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

            A Plumber’s Assistant, a ****, and an Artificial Tree

       **** Rally in Madison Square Garden, 10 February 1939

Isadore Greenbaum wanted to punch a ****
And so he charged – he didn’t get very far
And was beaten up by Real Americans (cough)
      (It took only four or five of ‘em)
And arrested by the New York City Police

One **** stopped kicking Greenbaum to set aright
An artificial tree that was about to fall
Which is a curiosity – what remnant of good
Was in that man that he kept a decoration in place?

Greenbaum is a hero in our nation’s history -
The tidy **** remains a mystery

The one-off bag is by Louis Vouitton
The sheath dress by Dolce & Gabbana
The low-top shoes by Christian Louboutin  
The vaporisation is by Sukhoi

Evening wear goes with biologicals
Retro pantsuits with a casual bomb
Alice Archer jeans for a weekend massacre
Jonathan Simkhai swimwear for an ocean boil

Ohhhhh, yeahhhhhhhh…

She turns every head when she enters the room
But The People’s Army delivers the BOOM

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com  
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

                               A Poem is its Own Studio

Words lift themselves from the canvas of life

The iambs are open so that the light drifts in
On the artist’s favourite smiling verb
Posing on a dais draped with flowing dreams
Before a canvas of possibilities

Words lift themselves from the canvas of life

A splash of adverb might go here – or not
Maybe a subtle conjunction instead to join
The thesis and the antithesis
In a loving reconciliation

Embraced by silent interjections of love
Words lift themselves from the canvas of life

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com  
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

                                     ­    A Poem is not a Helicopter

                                                  For­ Al Duquette

A helicopter is not a poem
A helicopter flies in three dimensions
If all of the systems are fitted just right
Otherwise, it does not fly at all

A poem is not a helicopter
A poem flies only metaphorically
If we rearrange the parts aesthetically
The poem might fly much better than before

One carries our friends wherever they want to go
The other carries our love to our friends

Lawrence Hall 3d
A Poem is not a Helicopter
Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com  
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

                                     ­    A Poem is not a Helicopter

                                                  For­­ Al Duquette

A helicopter is not a poem
A helicopter flies in three dimensions
If all of the systems are fitted just right
Otherwise, it does not fly at all

A poem is not a helicopter
A poem flies only metaphorically
If we rearrange the parts aesthetically
The poem might fly much better than before

One carries our friends wherever they want to go
The other carries our love to our friends




More exposition than I have ever written:

Al is my fellow volunteer in prison and was one of my mentors when I began. I am in awe of him because he flew helicopters with the Air Cavalry in Viet-Nam and then offshore with Petroleum Helicopters Incorporated. He is almost obsessively left-brained in all things and I am an old hippie so we are often on two different metaphorical channels.  After some mutual suspicion we came to the realization – because the prisoners pointed it out to us - that in working with a class together we communicate the same ideas in different ways, and so are more effective.

Al sees no point in poetry, although he appreciates the little poems I hand out to the lads as class openers. I think this is because they (the poems, not the prisoners) are short and simple, almost always rhyme, and are mostly Victorian parlour poems which contain a moral lesson and encouragement. This week, while waiting for the guards to bring us the fellows, Al said that prose is made of words and poetry is made of words and in both categories we choose the most effective words, and so what makes a difference. I replied that a poem is not a helicopter, that not all the bits have to fit together in only one way. Prose is indeed a matter of the right words in the right places but that a poem is a matter of even better words placed in even better places (This is not an original thought; I don’t remember where I learned it.). Al accepted my answer, but of course maybe he was merely being polite!

Written by
Lawrence Hall

Slouching...

                   From an idea suggested by Robert Graves in
                                       On English Poetry

I. Thesis

Formalist poetry to attention stands
In ordered meters, ranks and files and lines
Of scansion as determined by disciplined minds
And set in place through skillful strategy

II. Antithesis

Other poetry slouches indolently, insolently with its louche trilby askew
Sleeping late, smoking cigarettes,
                                                     sauntering off
                                                                ­              for a beer
Through scansion as admitted by the heart or the pancreas or something
And seldom set in place at all unless it just sort of happens

III. A Perhaps Unnecessary but Useful Conjunction

But

IV. Synthesis

All poems ramble the same neighborhood
In quest of the true, the beautiful, the good

politics, hostilities, anger, or sexuality, and yet HP says "There Was an Error," over and over.

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

              A Poetry Brawl Down at the Long Branch Saloon

I wrestled with a line of blank verse until
It fell, all writhing on the floor, and there
It gasped for breath and glared at me with hate
Each syllable grating against another

“You have a sorry accent,” it snarled
“And when my rhythm rises I will make you
A dactyl fallen or a trochee tripped
With my booted and spurred iambic feet!”

But we shook hands, and let our quarrel cease
And so at Miss Kitty’s there was
Syllabic accentuation at peace

Number Forty Two: “You're trying to undermine my rehabilitation. Disrupt my social progress!”

Number Six: “Strange talk for a poet.”

-The Prisoner, “A Change of Mind”



Installing a poem to factory specs
Setting iambic feet into concrete
And lifting adverbs to the tops of verbs
Through the use of heavy machinery

Metaphors must be government-inspected
For solidarity with the collective
And images most closely interrogated
For their relevance to the latest cause

The Good, the True, and the Beautiful

As cleared by United Auto Workers Local 2110
So you’d better like it; youknowwhatI’msayin’

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com  
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

                 A Poetry Tool Kit and a Small Sack of Concrete Verbs

The sorting trays hold syllables and rhymes
While heavy-duty meter is stowed below
With a chisel and file for shaping rough lines
And wire cutters for merciless editing

Iambs are tightened with the box-end wrench
The ball-peen hammer is a strong accent
A few loose screws might constitute free verse
If they will bother to sort themselves out

At the end of his shift a worthy artisan
Picks up the excess adjectives and adverbs

And burns them